Early modern Persianate cultures have been greatly influenced by the “mirror for princes” genre, which offers monarchs advice on how to treat their subjects justly as if they were intimate friends and familial companions. While scholars have chosen to study this genre from a patriarchal perspective, how royal women shaped this genre have remained underexamined. This paper argues that the Humayunnama, an autobiography written in Persian by the 16th century Mughal Princess, Gulbadan Begum, offers readers new ways of seeing how elite Mughal women used autobiographical writing to broker imperial power with male co-sovereigns. Building on Michel Foucault’s theory of counter-memory, I argue that Gulbadan creates a new “mirror for princesses” autobiography that redefines the genre by combining memory narratives and historical facts in the Humayunnama. Through this, she is able to instruct both female and male readers on how elite Mughal women embodied the Persianate masculine chivalry central to Mughal definitions of virtuous kingship, and how this integrated matriarchy contributed to the early formation of the Mughal Empire.